Automatic Mouse and Keyboard

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Editors' Review

Repeating the same tasks every day on your computer can eat up a lot of time. But an app that helps you automate some of those things could provide welcome relief. Automatic Mouse and Keyboard has lots of options to do just that, but the resulting recordings don't always perform as expected.

The initial interface includes multiple icons bordering the top and left. Automatic Mouse and Keyboard opens with three example recordings displayed, but the first one we tried, which was supposed to draw a triangle in MS Paint, didn't work, and we simply got an error message after a few seconds. The other example to open Notebook and create a text message worked fine. We jumped in with an easy task using MS Paint again. If you're just recording your mouse and keyboard actions, the process is as simple as hitting the Record button. Once you stop the recording, you can choose one of two play modes, fixed position or relative position. Unfortunately, we tried both modes but neither one resulted in the same actions we recorded to open MS Paint and draw a simple line. We also tried working with Start menu, taskbar, and desktop items, but didn't have 100% accuracy regardless of the actions we recorded. While the basics are fairly easy to understand, there's little on-screen explanation for more advanced settings to create "If..then" scenarios or to set variables and assign them values. Newer users will probably have to head to the online Help file to fully understand or use the more complex settings, but even more experienced users might be discouraged about those when the simple tasks don't seem to be carried out accurately all the time.

With so many programs out there that can more accurately record mouse and keyboard actions, Automatic Mouse and Keyboard isn't one we can recommend. You'll also have to manually delete some items that are left behind after you uninstall the program.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Automatic Mouse and Keyboard 5.1.9.6.

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Publisher's Description

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From RobotSoft:
Automatic Mouse and Keyboard is a tool with features that can free your hands and save your time. It is an inexpensive mouse and keyboard automation tool. You can define its actions to make it automatically do a lot of work. Features include simulate mouse and keyboard actions, automatically input text, record all mouse and keyboard actions and then repeat accurately, edit and optimize the mouse and keyboard actions record, locate a point on the screen with a small picture, and create scheduled tasks easily.

- It's fun automating mindless tasks and this software makes it easy (assuming you have some cursory background in programming concepts).- The "search a picture" feature is single-handedly what puts this app apart from other auto-mouse/auto-keyboard apps. You can configure how precise the image search is and can limit the search to certain regions of the screen so it doesn't search your entire desktop. You can then perform IF/ELSE-type functionality based on if that image was found or not.- The trial runs long enough to let you see if the app's automation features work for your scenario versus some hobbled trial where it feels like you're gambling on the purchase.

Cons

- You need to pay for the app for it to be really useful. If you're running the trial version it will stop your script and throw up a dialog after 3 minutes or 5 repeats-- whichever occurs first.

Summary

If you perform any repetitious task, say playing a Facebook Flash-based game or some other task that doesn't require active thinking, consider how much time you spend doing that activity and if you could be doing something else. Then calculate what your time is worth and multiply that by how much time you spend doing that activity. For me the value of my time exceeded the cost of "Automatic Mouse and Keyboard"'s 1-seat license of (~$30) and so it was easy to justify paying for it. (I know, paying for software, right?)

Suggestion:- the software could use a feature to let you preview what areas would be clicked by the "search a picture" feature because it can be hard to determine what %-accuracy threshhold to set and having to keep running the script to test it isn't optimal.

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